


Midsummer Festival

by SunlitStone



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aftermath of the War, Friendship, Gen, rebuilding after the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 03:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12334389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlitStone/pseuds/SunlitStone
Summary: The caldera's Midsummer Festival is a fine old tradition, dating back to before the war. Of course, a lot's changed since then...





	Midsummer Festival

The memories took him the moment Zuko saw the entry in his calendar: the smell of fresh-fried fish and festival pastries, the pictures done in different-coloured flames by showmen with powders up their sleeve, the spirit masks, the circus tumblers who even then had made him think of Ty Lee...the Midsummer Festival. But he hadn't celebrated it in years—he grimaced at himself. His uncle had, and his shipmates had. He hadn't wanted to, even when his uncle had told him it was a fine old Fire Nation tradition, predating the war—

—Predating the war. By more than a century, his uncle had said. He stared at his calendar for a moment, unseeing.

"Prepare a messenger hawk," he ordered. "I need to send a message to the Avatar."

\--

The festival would continue well into the night, but Zuko and Aang were done. They leaned against a wall, stuffed full of fire-flakes, and Zuko could feel his eyes trying to close as Aang shifted next to him on the bench; he was used to working long days, but this had been a whole other kind of tiring. Of course Aang was still as restless as ever. He wondered if it was an Air Nomad thing. But then, he figured, if you only ever met Ty Lee, you might think the same thing about people from the Fire Nation...

"That was really nice," said Aang quietly. "Thanks, Zuko."

He made his eyes open more fully and turned to look Aang in the face. He looked—tired. Not the way Zuko felt right now, but the way his uncle sometimes looked.

"Are you all right?" he said.

Aang sighed. "I guess...I just thought it would be more like it was before the war." He hunched in on himself, arms wrapped around his legs. "I guess I should know better by now."

Zuko fought down uncertainty and tried to think what his uncle would do. Or, no, this was Aang—what would Katara do?

He reached out hesitantly and put his hand on Aang's shoulder. _Uh._ "I think...I think it's normal to think things are going to be like they were when you left them. Even when you know they're not."

"Yeah," said Aang. "I guess."

They sat together in silence.

"Did you—uh," said Zuko finally. "What was it like before the war?"

Aang's whole face lit up. "It was so great. You used to have people from all over—I used to go with Gyatso, one year they had a bunch of people with badgermoles, and they did all kinds of cool tricks—or this one time some Air Nomads and some waterbenders teamed up, and they did this really cool dance above the fountain in that square, you know, where they were selling the pastry dragons? And—"

Zuko sat and listened until Aang ran out of words. He couldn't imagine it, not really. When his father had been Fire Lord, his grandfather, none of them would for a moment have let anyone from outside the Fire Nation perform in any festival in the caldera, never mind this one.

—they weren't the Fire Lord, though, anymore.

"Next year," he found himself saying abruptly, "you could—put something together. If you wanted. Uh, custard tarts, right? I could ask Kuei to put something together, get some people down from the Northern Water Tribe..."

He trailed off. Aang was beaming at him.

"We're gonna make the best festival _ever_."

Zuko could feel the corner of his mouth lifting. "Yeah," he said, leaning back into the wall. "I guess we will."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'any fandom - any character - summer fair' at [fic-promptly](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/).


End file.
